I drink a lot of beer. I like classic rock and roll. As a nineteen-year-old I fought in Vietnam. My father was a wife beater. That’s why I joined the army at the age of eighteen. I grew up in a steel town. I grew up in the ghetto. I spent most of my life around college students or being a college student myself. I was the front man for several years in different basement rock bands. After Vietnam I hung out at a local college that had a first class ballet department. I have known women. And so on and so forth.
What does any of this have to do with anything? It’s what I write about. And I don’t think any of these experiences are unique. It’s simply my life.
In other words, whatever your life is it’s a gold mine of material for your fiction.
Here are two stories based upon my life:
The Modern American Woman (A Short Short Story) www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/The-Modern-American-Woman.632185
Vietnam in the Mist (A Short Short Story) www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/Vietnam-in-the-Mist.643749
Filed under: Writing Flash Fiction Tagged: | American, army, ballet, beer, bloggers, classic rock, college students, creative writing, experiences, Flash Fiction Stories by Guy Hogan, ghetto, modern, short short, short story tips, Vietnam, wife, woman, women, write, Writers
Hmmm, you really do have that beer drinking thing going on and it seems to work for you. I’m reading through your articles and fiction…we have a lot in common. Military, band, father was a wife beater, long time college student, if you tell me you’re a jack Mormon, lived on an Indian reservation and have
Appalachian ancestry I just might decide we’re kin folk.
Betty, I would love it if we were kin folk. Since I really do drink a lot of beer in real life, I decided to make it a device in my fiction. My characters drink to remember, to forget and to help kill the pain of life. Just like real people in real life. A writer must write about what he or she knows.